We don't believe in terrible people?

MONDAY, JUNE 17, 2024

We may have to rethink that stance: For the record, Rachel Manteuffel isn't (exactly) a columnist at the Washington Post.

Her (very occasional) opinion columns are few and quite far between. She is described the following way on what seems to be her official bio page:

Rachel Manteuffel

Washington, D.C.
Op-ed administrator

Rachel Manteuffel works in the Editorial department and writes op-eds and features.

Officially, Manteuffel seems to be an "op-ed administrator," whatever that means. Her recent, whimsical column appeared under this dual headline:

How one delightful channel soothed my election-year angst
The perfect opposite of our rage-frothing politics? Watching a cheetah who is best friends with a dog.

In the whimsical column, Manteuffel did indeed write about "a cheetah who is best friends with a dog." 

More on that below. For now, let's take our exploration just a bit further:

Based on the listings shown on that official page, the column about election-year angst and the friendly cheetah seems to have been Manteuffel's second column of this calendar year. 

It seems to have been her fourth column in the past two years. Fuller disclosure:

In October 2022, she also authored a Washington Post Magazine essay which appeared beneath this headline:

Why are so many shopping carts missing from my grocery store? An investigation.

In short, aside from her regular work as an "op-ed administrator," Manteuffel is a verry occasional writer for the Post. When she does publish a piece, her work is often, though not always, whimsical or tongue in cheek.

Her column about the friendly cheetah appeared on-line last Wednesday. In the column, she described a delightful cable channel she recently discovered—a channel from the San Diego Zoo.

She discovered the channel when she recently spent a day and a night in the hospital for some undisclosed medical reason. Manifestly, she didn't say that she was being treated for some sort of "lefty" nervous breakdown related to election angst.

Last night, four terrible people at the Fox News Channel decided to add that grimy claim into the mix as part of their Red Nation fun. Simply put, there's nothing people like these won't do to keep those cable checks coming.

We've often said that, as a general matter, we don't believe in terrible people and don't think you should either. (We do believe in terrible conduct.) We're prepared to consider making a change with respect to last night's work by these four stunningly egregious Fox News Channel hacks:

Tom Shillue, Fox News Contributor
Tammy Bruce, Fox News Contributor
Julie Banderas, Fox News anchor
David Webb, Fox News contributor

If there were such a thing as terrible people, we'd have four right there.

The four appeared as panelists for the full hour on last night's routinely braindead Big Weekend Show. In a garbage can segment which started at 7:38 p.m., the group made mincemeat out of Manteuffel and out of her recent column, which they had quite likely never read.

It's hard to believe what people will do to keep receiving those cable news checks. 

We'll grade Shillue as the most egregious, given the fact that he's a regular on the gruesome Gutfeld! primetime program. Bruce has been hacking it out on Fox for decades, initially distinguishing herself as the now-conservative former president of Los Angeles NOW.

We won't stoop to the level of describing the contents of last night's segment. If you want to watch a group of seals turn tricks for their fish, you can start by clicking here.

It's stunning, though highly instructive, to see what people will do to keep those checks rolling in. Is the work really better on our Blue Tribe channels?

We'll say perhaps yes, by a hair.  

Manteuffel wrote a whimsical column. No, the column wasn't "political" or partisan in any particular sense.

One commenter after another said how much they'd enjoyed the column. Commenters always like her (very occasional) columns.

At that point, the hacks arrived. We humans have always been like this!